Early this year, Film Hub South East (run by the Independent Cinema Office), using National Lottery funding from the British Film Institute, commissioned Indigo to conduct an evaluation of the BFI Film Audience Network (FAN).
Indigo's evaluation looked at audience statistics gathered by the BFI from five years of the Film Audience Network, as well as undertaking interviews with regional Film Hubs and FAN member organisations to tell the story of the Network's impact since 2018 and make recommendations for its next iteration. To deepen the insight, Indigo worked with industry expert Suzie Norton from Zanna Creative, and cultural evaluators, Culture Counts. The final report has now been published online by the BFI.
This evaluation is the latest in a series of sector-wide projects led by Indigo, following in the footsteps of our evaluation of the Birmingham Commonwealth Games 2022 cultural programme and our ongoing delivery (with partners Baker Richards) of the UK Heritage Pulse.
Indigo's CEO and Founder Katy Raines reflects:
“For our evaluation of the last five years of the BFI's Film Audience Network, the Indigo team has taken our trademark collaborative approach, bringing in film industry expertise as well as partnering once again with our long-time collaborators, Culture Counts. Our analysis of both the audience data and our depth interviews with FAN members told a story of the great value of this model of support and funding to develop and diversify UK audiences for independent film and screen heritage.
"We found that FAN's devolved funding model was extremely effective in supporting meaningful projects embedded in communities, and catalysed partnership working. This phase of FAN exceeded targets for in-person audiences, despite the impact of the pandemic, although we know there is further to go so that audiences become truly representative of all communities. We found that independent cinema had an important role in community-building and place-making, and our report encourages the BFI to continue to invest in the FAN model into the future, under their current National Lottery Funding Plan"
